Blog

We finished our global festival tour at home, where it all started, Sydney Australia. We screened as the Opening Night film at Australia's oldest genre fest, A Night of Horror Film Festival.

We also picked up 3 awards from the festival; Best Foreign Language Film, Best Australian Film & Best Australian Director! It was a crazy 8 months of touring through Europe, USA, Asia and Australia and we're thankful to all the support we received from our international festival hosts.

Suela Bako has just been awarded BEST ACTRESS at the 2017 Nashville Film Festival in USA. The award was handed out in the Graveyard Shift section where BLOODLANDS was playing, along with a fantastic and competitive selection of films.

Writer/Director Steven Kastrissios attended the festival and had this to say:

"I always knew Suela would win an award for her work in Bloodlands. It was just a matter of time, her performance is too good not to be recognised. She paints with her full palate of colours to bring the role of the family's matriarch to life and everyone who witnesses her performance has thrown tremendous praise upon it. I'm so glad to have been witness to her process. She was the hardest working actor we had on the production. She was always academically digging further into the script and the character, to understand every aspect of what I'd written and was able to pull out nuances I never would have thought of, to create a fully realised mother struggling with the challenges of modern life in Albania".

After our world premiere at Frightfest@Glasgow Film Festival, Bloodlands screened at FANTASPORTO in Portugal where some of the lucky Albanian cast and crew (Gëzim Rudi, Suela Bako, Ilire Vinca, Tan Kazazi and Dritan Arbana) joined writer/director Steven Kastrissios to present the film. The screening went well and the team had a blast in Oporto where the festival took great care of the team. Oporto is a beautiful city and FANTASPORTO now comes highly recommended by us!

The next festival was BIFFF (Brussels) where lead actor Emiljano Palali joined Kastrissios to present the film. BIFFF is a huge festival and this year celebrated its 35th edition. Bloodlands screened in competition as part of European selection. Again the festival took great care of the Bloodlands team, despite making the director sing on stage as part of the long-held tradition at BIFFF.

Next, we have our USA premiere at Nashville Film Festival, also screening in competition. The film will screen twice and this is the first non-genre specific festival Bloodlands has been a part of, so we're curious to see how it goes. The screening is tomorrow night, so wish us luck!

We've also just been notified of two more major international festivals we've been selected for, and will announce shortly (when we're allowed). Thanks for your support!

We've been tight lipped about this for months and there's more announcements to come very soon, but we're thrilled to finally tell everyone we're screening BLOODLANDS as part of Frightfest's line-up of international genre miracles to be featured at 2017 Glasgow Film Festival.

Hopefully the Glasgow February weather won't let us down and it'll be pouring rain, blowing a gale and overall depressingly overcast for the world premiere. That would be perfect for this little horror story to take flight :)

Thanks for coming to see the new website for Albania's debut horror film! As we roll into 2017, the site will expand to reveal more about Bloodlands, both the story and behind the scenes of this unique international production. Check back again soon for more information about screenings near you, competitions and how to rent & purchase the film.